Fashion Critic Opposes Hong Kong Democracy

PARIS — Ever since Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi of Iraq let slip during his United Nations visit last week that his government had uncovered information about an ISIS plan to attack the subways in New York and Paris, there has been a niggling sense of unease hanging over the final fashion city of the season.

"You aren't too worried about taking the Métro?" said one showgoer to another when the subject of how to get to Givenchy came up on Sunday. (Though Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York had come forward to reassure his city, in Paris, Mayor Anne Hidalgo had done no such thing.)

It wasn't helped by the news of protests in Hong Kong, an erstwhile (maybe not so much anymore?) high-fashion retailing Valhalla. Still, by Monday and the last three days of the season, at least the Air France pilots had stopped striking.

You take the positive where you can find it, and watch your back. It may be one of the lessons of the season.

Some of us have reacted to the news of protests in favor of freedom, democracy, and the rule of law in Hong Kong with feelings of pride, joy, and pleasure. Some of us, including me, may consider them as positive news, rather than a nuisance such as, say, an Air France strike. The Times fashion critic, however, seems to see them as a source of "unease," driven by fear that the protests might hurt the luxury retail business. As if pro-democracy protests are in the same category as as a terrorist threat.

This reader would would prefer that the Times fashion critic quit the geopolitical commentary and just tell us about the clothes. But if she is going to write about politics, one wishes she'd be a bit less callous toward the protesters, and a bit less clumsy in her judgments. Had this fashion critic been sent to cover Martin Luther King's civil rights march on Washington, she'd have come back with a story on how it hurt business at the District of Columbia's downtown department stores.

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